Generating wind energy is more than twice as cheap as solar photovoltaic (PV) energy production, a study of alternative energy in six developing countries has found.

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The findings, published in Nature Climate Change last week (15 April), could help inform global debates on financing initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.

The authors note that differentiating technologies or countries is one of the reforms under discussion in the Clean Development Mechanism following its experience with nearly 3,500 projects in 70-plus countries.

They commented that there is little available data on the costs of different renewable energy technologies in developing countries, and that such information is needed to allocate funding through such mechanisms as the Green Climate Fund — which is expected to raise US$100 billion per year by 2020.

The researchers, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, studied the baseline costs of current energy sources in Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nicaragua and Thailand — including the cost of national fuel subsidies — and then investigated the relative costs of switching to wind or solar electricity.